team cascadia vs. the Repugs in NYC - 1 of 3

author: Brian Thomas for Team Cascadia

This 1st of a 3 part photo essay covers August 28th - 29th -- the weekend before the convention began.

Find out more about what happened in NYC this Saturday September 18th at 7pm at the IWW hall at 617 E. Burnside at the report back from the Republican National Convention. Including the: NY police tactics, arrests, legal proceedings, jail support, etc.

01. our convergence space in the Bronx

02. The Church Ladies for Choice

03. Team Cascadia's banner

04. Central Park after the big march

05. Mouse bloc on Broadway

01. our convergence space in the Bronx -- the lace curtains of the purple room

Aug. 27th to Sept. 2nd Team Cascadia was 3,000 miles from home saying NO to the Republican National Convention in New York City. We gathered in the Bronx as the afternoon light streamed in through the curtains of the purple room at St. Peter's Lutheran Church. I was inspired by St. Peter's Pastor Michael Thomas' Sunday sermon to begin this Team Cascadia report with a three sentence sermon of my own.

Jesus told a rich man seeking the kingdom of heaven to "sell all you possess and give the money to the poor." Jesus is not an easy God. He is not, as the current administration would have you believe, a God that tells his followers that they can pursue all the world's wealth guilt-free in exchange for giving up someone else's ability to choose whether or not to give birth or get married.

I honor all those who truly live as if each human life is sacred. For the children of an easy God I present the Church Ladies for Choice...

."Stupid fascist Nazi nutso psycho rightwing bullshit, every time you talk to them, you'll find that they are full of shit." (to the tune of "Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious")

"You make me feel like a pro-choice woman" (to the tune of "Natural Woman")

Those were a couple of the hits sung by the Church Ladies for Choice August 28th, Brooklyn to Manhattan March for Women's Lives.

The bottom two images and those on the next two pages were taken the following day when close to half a million marched on Madison Square Gardens, the site of the Republican National Convention in New York City. What is it like to march in NYC with nearly 1/2 million people? -- It's like marching in a crowded phone booth.

Team Cascadia is an affinity group for folks from the 700 mile stretch of the earth that is crowned by the Cascade mountain range. With drawings by Eric Drooker
(http://drooker.com/) our banner illustrates Bush's war on the family in America as well as in Iraq. In one image a giant hand uproots a building and shakes its inhabitants out into the street. On each end is a print by the German Expressionist Kathe Kollwitz that shows a couple collapsing into despair as they learn that their child has been killed in battle. The text reads in part, "A party that values profits over parents has no family values."

No doubt the GOP's religious right wing would disagree with our analysis. We see things from such different points of view. They don't value our concerns about how our wasteful over consumption of the world's resources damages the earth and its inhabitants. We don't value their concerns about what goes on in other people's bedrooms.

Before leaving for New York, Team Cascadia voted to disregard the ban on gathering after Sunday's big march in Central Park. We weren't traveling 3,000 miles to hide our concerns on the outskirts of town. We set up a secret rendezvous point in the park because we feared that we were in for a perilous adventure.

What we got was a walk in the park. Over the course of the afternoon tens of thousands of protesters and a dozen Billionaires for Bush took Central Park's Great lawn without a fight. That evening's stroll down Broadway to Times Square was less peaceful.

On the evening of the big march, the evening before the convention began, most of the Republican delegates attended a Broadway play. Each theatre was guarded by a squad of cops. One of Team Cascadia's members was arrested for participating in a Queer Kiss-in not too far from one of the theatres. Another Cascadian (lower left) was arrested preemptively for walking down the sidewalk towards one of the theatres. At the lower right a Republican delegate clenches her fists in response to Team Cascadia's enthusiastic greeting.

Some Republican delegates chose to show their commitment to family values by visiting a high class strip club (top) instead of a Broadway play.

Permission granted to official indymedia sites ONLY to reproduce these images on their sites without links. Permission granted to all other non-commercial web sites to reproduce one or two of them if they link back to the beginning of this photo essay on indymedia or on my site: